Indo-Iranian languagesgroup of languages constituting the easternmost major branch of the Indo-European family of languages; only the Tocharian languages are found farther east. Scholarly consensus holds that the Indo-Iranian languages include the Iranian and Indo-Aryan (Indic) languages are spoken by some 800 million persons in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and other areas of the Himalayan region. In addition, languages of the Indo-Aryan group are spoken by about 5,000,000 people in Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania: the Gypsy, or Romany, dialects that are distributed about parts of Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America are of Indo-Aryan origin. Speakers of Iranian languages number in the tens of millions and live in areas extending from Pakistan to Iran, Afghanistan, Transcaucasia, and Central Asialanguage groups. Some scholars suggest that the Nūristānī and Bangani languages belong in the Indo-Iranian group as well.

Distribution

In the early 21st century, Indo-Iranian languages were spoken by nearly one billion individuals, most of whom resided in a broad region of southwestern and southern Asia. Speakers of modern Iranian languages number between 150 and 200 million; Persian, Pashto, and Kurdish are the most widely spoken of these languages. Speakers of modern Indo-Aryan languages number more than 800 million persons; Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, and Urdu are the most widely spoken of these languages. Among the Indo-European languages, only

Linear A

Greek and

Linear B and

Hittite possess

records that go back farther in time

written records older than those of Indo-Iranian.

The Indo-Iranian

tongues

languages have been used

as

in both administrative and literary

languages

contexts. Old Persian was the administrative language of the early Achaemenian dynasty, dating from the 6th century

BC;

BCE, and an eastern Middle Indo-Aryan dialect was the language of the chancellery of the Mauryan emperor Aśoka in

India

the Indian subcontinent in the mid-3rd century

BC. As literary languages, the

BCE. The Indo-Iranian languages

were

have also been used in the

texts

literature of some of the world’s great religions: Indo-Aryan for Buddhism, Hinduism,

and

Jainism, and Sikhism and Iranian for

Zoroastrian

Zoroastrianism and

Manichaean texts

Manichaeism. The oldest Zoroastrian texts are in dialects included under the name Avestan. Commerce, conquest, and religion spread the influence of these languages. Indo-Aryan languages, for example, penetrated deep into Southeast Asia;

names

lexical borrowings in Indonesia, Thailand, and other areas and Sanskrit texts in Cambodia reflect this influence.

Origins

The original location of the Indo-Iranian group was probably to the north of modern Afghanistan, east of the Caspian Sea, in the area that is now Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, where Iranian languages are still spoken. From there, some Iranians migrated to the south and west, the Indo-Aryans to the south and east. From geographical references in the earliest Indo-Aryan literary document, the Ṛgveda (“The Veda Composed in Verses,” c. 1500 BCE), it is clear that the earliest settlement of Indo-Aryans was in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent. Migration did not take place at once. It is now generally accepted that there were doubtless a series of migrations, although the now-discredited view that an Indo-Aryan invasion took place was once seriously entertained. The date of entry of the Indo-Aryans into the Indian subcontinent cannot be determined precisely, though the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE is plausible and generally accepted.

There is controversy concerning the precise position of the language of the Indo-Iranian family first attested in Middle Eastern texts of about 1450–1350 BCE. Some borrowed words and proper names appearing in these Hittite-Hurrian documents have been interpreted variously as belonging to Indo-Iranian, to an Indic subgroup of Indo-Iranian that had not yet fully split, or to Indo-Aryan proper. For example, the number word aika- ‘one’ has been considered to indicate that the language in question was Indo-Aryan, since the Iranian term is aiva- (Avestan aēuua-/aēuuā-) in contrast to Sanskrit eka-, although the Sanskrit particle eva ‘only, indeed,’ comparable to Avestan aēuua-/aēuuā- ‘indeed,’ can be considered to reflect the existence in earliest Indo-Aryan of both eka- and eva- for ‘one.’ Consensus has yet to be reached on this issue, although a majority of authorities hold that the language in question represents an early variety of Old Indo-Aryan, prior to changes such as the replacement of *źh by h (e.g., *źh > jh > h).

Also awaiting further research is the identification of the Harappan peoples of the Indus Valley and other sites in the subcontinent, whose writing has not yet been satisfactorily deciphered despite decades of effort. A definitive solution to this problem could possibly answer the question of whether Indo-Aryans encountered these people or whether Harappan civilization had passed by the time the Indo-Aryans arrived on the subcontinent, although scholars now generally agree that the Indus Valley civilization’s decline was not due to any Indo-Aryan invasion. Whatever may be the answers to the questions concerning the Middle Eastern texts and the Harappan peoples, the reasons for the split of the Indo-Aryans and Iranians are not known.

The above scenario assumes that the Indo-Aryans migrated into the Indian subcontinent. This is not, however, universally accepted. There are scholars, both Indian and non-Indian, who maintain that the Indo-Aryans originated in the subcontinent, whence they emigrated. Indeed, it has been argued that the earliest Indo-Aryan as represented in Vedic texts is tantamount to Proto-Indo-European. The issue is complex, and evidence that could be absolutely probative is largely lacking—there is no archaeological evidence that definitively establishes a migration of Indo-Aryans into the subcontinent, but there is equally no definitive archaeological evidence of Iranians and other Indo-European groups having emigrated from the subcontinent. Moreover, the textual evidence from Sanskrit sources that some have claimed demonstrates that Indo-Aryans retained memories of an earlier homeland from which they migrated into the Indian subcontinent is small and subject to serious doubt, as it serves to support this thesis only with considerable interpretational effort.

The linguistic evidence, on the other hand, is best reconciled with the thesis that the Indo-Aryans did indeed go to the subcontinent from an external homeland and that the early Vedic system is not equivalent to that of Proto-Indo-European. It is methodologically less plausible, for example, to assume that the Vedic vowel system, which contains a, ā, i, ī, u, ū, but no short e or o, is the system ancestral to that of Indo-European languages such as Greek and Latin, which do have short e and o. One would have to assume not only that a of the ancestral proto-language split into e and o under conditions difficult to specify but also that differences between different kinds of a vowels in Indo-Iranian account for the alternations between velars and palatals in these languages. It is methodologically simpler to assume that the late Proto-Indo-European system had vowels e, ē, o, ō, a, ā, and that these vowels merged in Indo-Iranian.

Characteristics of Iranian and Indo-Aryan

Common features

The close relation between the Iranian and Indo-Aryan groups has never been doubted. They share

characteristic

linguistic features

that set them apart

to such a degree that Indo-Iranian is generally described as a distinct subgroup of Indo-European.

The

For example, the long and short varieties of the Indo-European vowels e

,

and o

,

appear as āand ă (a

, for example, appear as long and short a: Sanskrit manas- “mind, spirit,” Avestan manah-, but Greek ménos “ardour, force.” (In the following examples, a macron (¯) indicates a long vowel; a breve (˘) indicates a short vowel. The spellings used in this article for Indo-Aryan and Iranian forms are traditional transliterations for the most part. In some cases, more accurate phonetic symbols are used. These can be found in the International Phonetic Alphabet.)

Conversely, the perfect of Sanskrit han ‘strike, kill’ (3rd sg. pres. indic. hanti, 3rd sg. fut. haniṣyati) has the velar -gh- in the root syllable of perfect forms such as ja-ghān-a (3rd sg.). The long -ā- in such forms reflects a development of Proto-Indo-European -o- in open syllables. Greek forms of the type lé-loip-e ‘left’ (3rd sg. pfct.) show e in the reduplicated syllable and -o- in the root syllable. Similarly, Sanskrit causatives such as sād-ay-a-ti ‘seats,’ from the base sad ‘sit’ (3rd sg. pres. indic. sīdati, 3rd sg. aor. asadat), show -ā- in open syllables. The comparable Germanic formation, seen in Gothic satjan ‘seat,’ shows -a- as a regular development from Proto-Indo-European o.

In instances in which some Indo-European languages have

an

a

sound

vowel a, Indo-Iranian has i as a reflex of Proto-Indo-European sounds called

laryngeals—e

laryngeals—e.g., Greek

patēr “father

patḗr ‘father,

”

’ Sanskrit pitṛ-(nom. sing. pitā́), Avestan and Old Persian pitar-. After stems ending in short or long

at an early period the diphthongs ai and au, which were changed to simple vowels e and oin Indo-Aryan, and long diphthongs that were shortened to ai and au in Indo-Aryan. The earlier diphthongs are nevertheless reflected by certain Indo-Aryan alternations. Thus, prevocalic -ay- and -au- alternate with preconsonantal e and o; e.g., jay-a-ti (3rd sg. pres. indic.) ‘conquers, is victorious,’ stav-a- ‘praise’ and je-tum (infinitive) ‘to conquer,’ sto-tum ‘to praise.’ In addition, under conditions that determine the use of extralong vowels in final syllables of words, corresponding to vocative singulars in -e or -o such as agne ‘Agni!’ and vāyo ‘Vāyu!,’ one finds agnā3i and vāyā3u, with an extralong segment ā of three morae (indicated by the -3- in the phonetic spelling) followed by i and u.

Iranian differs from Indo-Aryan in grammatical features as well. The dative singular of -a-stems ends in -āi in

Iranian; e

Iranian—e.g., Avestan

mašyāi

mašiiāi ‘mortal, man,’ Old Persian

cartanaiy “to do”

cartainaiy ‘to do’ (an original dative singular form of an action noun, functioning as infinitive of the verb). In Sanskrit the ending is extended with

‘you’ (nominative plural); in Indo-Aryan the -s-was replaced by -y-(yūyam) on the model of the

1st

first person plural—vayam

“we”

‘we’ (Avestan vaēm, Old Persian vayam).

Finally

Further, Iranian has a

3rd

third person pronoun di (accusative dim) that has no counterpart in Indo-Aryan

but has one in Baltic.

The original location of the Indo-Iranian group was probably to the north of modern Afghanistan, in the present-day states of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, where Iranian languages are still spoken. From there, some Iranians migrated to the south and west, the Indo-Aryans to the south and east. From geographical references in the earliest Indo-Aryan literary document, the Rigveda, it is clear that the earliest settlement of Indo-Aryans was in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent. Migration did not take place at once; there was doubtless a series of migrations. The date of entry of the Indo-Aryans into the subcontinent cannot be precisely determined, though the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC is plausible and generally accepted.

There is heated controversy concerning the precise linguistic position of the language of the Indo-Iranian family first attested in Middle Eastern cuneiform texts of c. 1450–1350 BC. Some borrowed words and proper names appearing in these Hittite-Hurrian documents have been interpreted as belonging either to Indo-Iranian, to an Indic subgroup of Indo-Iranian that had not yet fully split, or to Indo-Aryan proper. Complete scholarly agreement on this issue has not been reached.

The identification of the Harappān peoples of the Indus Valley, whose writing has not yet been satisfactorily deciphered, also awaits further research; with it may come a possible answer as to whether Indo-Aryans encountered these people or whether their civilization had passed by the time the Indo-Aryans arrived on the subcontinent. Whatever the answers to these problems may be, the reasons for the split of the Indo-Aryans and Iranians are not known.

.

Nūristānī and Bangani

On the basis of particular phonological developments, some scholars have recognized a distinct Nūristānī group consisting of Ashkun, Kati, Prasun, Waigali, and Tregami (all spoken in the Hindu Kush), in addition to the Indo-Aryan and Indo-Iranian groups. For example, Indo-Aryan regularly has ś as a reflex of Proto-Indo-European *j (e.g., Sanskrit keśa- ‘hair,’ śvan-/śun- ‘dog’), but Nūristānī languages show an affricate (ts, usually transcribed ċ) for this—e.g., Kati and Waigali kēċ ‘hair,’ Waigali and Tregami ċū̃ ‘dog.’ The situation is complicated by the fact that š also appears for *j—e.g., Waigali dōš ‘ten’ as opposed to Kati duċ (Sanskrit daśan-).

Other scholars, however, consider Nūristānī a subgroup of Indo-Aryan, and certain cultural facts are considered to support this view. For example, Ashkun imrā́, Kati ímro, Waigali yamrái, Prasun yumrā́ ‘name of a supreme deity (king Yama)’ are comparable to an Old Indo-Aryan compound of yama- ‘Yama (lord of the dead)’ and rājan- ‘king.’ A reasonable hypothesis to account for these and other linguistic facts is that the Nūristānī languages represent a group of early Indo-Aryan people that remained behind, separated from the main body of Indo-Aryan speakers that migrated into the area of the Punjab. However, as yet there is no scholarly consensus on this issue.

Quite recently, evidence was made available suggesting that Bangani, spoken in the area of Bangan—in westernmost Garwhal, Uttarakhand—is a centum language within the Indo-Aryan area. For example, Bangani dɔkɔ ‘ten’ and dɔkru ‘tear’ have k, as does a centum language like Latin (decem, lacrima), as opposed to Indo-Aryan, which has a spirant representing Proto-Indo-European *ḱ, as do other satem languages: note Sanskrit daśan-, aśru-. This claim is still being debated.